How and Why We Started PoolTogether
PoolTogether Community Interview #7: Leighton Cusack, PoolTogether Co-Founder, Part 1
Hello,
Today we have part one of a fantastic interview with the inspiration behind PoolTogether - Leighton Cusack. He will explain what the overall vision of the protocol is, how it came to fruition and also which protocols inspired him and the Team. (Thank you to Pedro for the fantastic interview image!)
In the meantime, the international aspect of the PoolTogether Community SubStack has really been growing. We now have a Chinese edition alongside the Spanish and Portuguese language editions. All of this is of course Community led with energy and inspiration from PT Community members from all over the world!
Please join us to share and explore the world of PoolTogether!
What did you do before starting PoolTogether?
My background was as a software engineer and I started a company called Kindred which was a software designed to make it easier to donate money. I started this in 2011 to early 2012 and ran it until I sold it in 2017.
We had 17 employees and several hundred millions of dollars in donations before I sold it.
I then left in March 2018 and got into crypto full-time. I bought Bitcoin (BTC) in late 2016 and then by late 2018 I was working full-time in this area.
What was your thinking around the possibilities of blockchain/cryptocurrency?
I reasoned that this was an opportunity to use crypto/blockchain technology which gives a chance to help people who do not have as much money to start off with to start creating wealth.
I researched from first principles and recognized that to become wealthy, you need to have access to value generating assets. However, most people do not have enough money to do this.
So, the idea was that they could just save initially. This was my thinking, how could I help people with this?
I just had a broad idea to use blockchain technology to help people become financially healthy. I had lots of ideas which I researched and all of them were under this umbrella. I spoke to friends and one way I learnt to help people was through prize savings.
I thought that this was a brilliant idea and could work way better on the blockchain than in traditional finance.
How did PoolTogether come about?
In February 2019, I went to the Ethereum Developer Conference in Denver, Colorado. This was a hackathon weekend where people build things on top of Ethereum. I went by myself with my idea and there was the opportunity to pitch this.
There, I met Brendan and Chuck and together we founded PoolTogether.
How developed are your coding skills?
I don’t have coding skills but I do have a deep technical understanding. This is very normal in the tech space for example, Robert Leshner of Compound and Stani Kulechov of AAVE are also not developers. It is normal that one of the co-founders is not a technical person.
Brendan is very technical and just amazing.
What were the next steps in developing PoolTogether?
After the hackathon, nothing was really built. I hired Brendan and Chuck for one week and paid them myself to develop a prototype. We used this to request a grant from the MakerDAO Foundation to get an audit which was about $10k to $15k.
The security audit was very expensive but security is a priority for the protocol.
Once we had this, we were able to launch Version 1 which was very basic but the team was not working full-time on this.
The question was how do we transition this to be a full-time project?
So, after the launch, we did fund-raising for PT Inc. This was as a standard equity investment and there were no plans at that time for doing a token.
This idea of tokens organically evolved once we became a stable enough community. It was always the plan to be decentralized. The token was then helpful to make decisions and in the summer of 2020 we thought the protocol was stable enough to distribute a token to help the protocol grow.
Which other DeFi protocols gave you inspiration in how you built out PoolTogether?
I learned a lot from Compound. At the technical level, we were using Compound Governance. Compound has 10 million COMP tokens, PoolTogehter has 10 million POOL tokens.
They gave the most inspiration as Compound is really well executed.
We have taken inspiration from many different protocols including Axie Infinity which is not super heavily financial but is also fun – i.e. not 100% super-serious. This is similar to PoolTogether in that we are also meant to be somewhat fun and we have a game side.
What are your thoughts on the PoolTogether Community?
I think this is the best community compared to any other protocol. We still have a lot of growth as well.
It took a long time to cultivate a warm, friendly atmosphere and there are no shortcuts to doing this.
For example, Richard (of The Richard Show podcast) had been on for a year, or maybe even 2 years consistently and has been helping people.
The community has been stopping scams, answering questions. The key is some things just cannot be expedited.
Steps were taken to make sure the culture would be kind, welcoming, educating and almost self-policing.
We also wanted to engage and empower the community which is why when we designed the POOL Token distribution, we gave the early users 2x the number of tokens as the investors and PT Inc employees combined.
We wanted to be clear to the community that “you’re important” and you truly have control. This is why you only need 10,000 POOL tokens as the threshold to submit a governance proposal. With Compound it is 100,000 and Uniswap millions.
We wanted a threshold which would increase the legitimacy and the engagement of the PoolTogether Community.
What would be your suggestions to people new to PoolTogether?
I would say it is definitely worth giving it a try and to start small. DeFi is complicated so PoolTogether is a great way to get a start.
I would recommend using Polygon and not Ethereum because it does not make sense to use Ethereum below $50k deposits because of the gas fees. This is most likely too much for a normal person.
Try it. This is so important as the only way to learn is to do it.
If you have any questions, please reach out to the community who are really happy to help.
We hope you have enjoyed Part 1 of this interview with Leighton Cusack, the PoolTogether Co-Founder. In the second interview, we will be talking about PoolTogether Governance and the token structure as well as how PoolTogether Inc works alongside and with the PoolTogether Community.
Please look out in the meantime for the next Community Newsletter coming out on Sunday and please be sure to share this newsletter with your crypto and DeFi friends and family!
Today at 2.45pm EST we also have the latest PoolTogether Community Call on our Discord Server.